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Posted on 07/13/2005 10:29:25 PM PDT by SAMWolf
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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Misunderstood Allied Secret Weapon The importance of decrypted German radio transmissions to Allied victory is well documented. Almost forgotten, however, is the fact that Ultra intelligence was sometimes squandered.  The breaking of the high-level German codes began with the efforts of the Polish secret service in the interwar period. By creating a copy of the basic German enciphering machine, the Poles managed to read German signal traffic throughout the 1930s with varying degrees of success. However, shortly before the Munich conference in September 1938, the Germans made alterations to their enciphering machine—the so-called Enigma machine—and in mid-September, darkness closed over German message traffic. The Poles continued their work, however, and after France and Britain's guarantee of Polish independence in March 1939, they passed along to the British what they had thus far achieved. Considerable cooperation had also existed earlier between the Poles and the French. Building on what they had learned from their Continental allies, British cryptanalysts finally cracked some of the German codes in April 1940, just before the great offensive against France and the Low Countries. Other successes soon followed and gave Allied intelligence officers and commanders valuable insights into German intentions and capabilities. Nevertheless, the British were only able to break a small proportion of the specific codes used by the Wehrmacht. At the end of 1943, the Kriegsmarine, for example, used up to forty different ciphers, all requiring different Enigma machine settings. During the Battle of the Atlantic, the transmissions from U-boats to shore and from the commander of submarines to his boats received the highest priorities from cryptanalysts at Bletchley Park, the location of the British decoding efforts in Europe.  Even with the exceptional resources available there and at that time, it took experts several days and in some cases up to a week to find solutions for a particular day's settings on the Enigma machine. The task of getting invaluable intelligence information out to the field where it could be of direct help was, of course, immensely difficult, especially given fears that if the Germans found out that their codes were being compromised on a daily basis, Ultra intelligence would dry up. In 1940 during the Battle of Britain, this need for concealment was not great, but as the war spread throughout Europe and the Mediterranean, it became an increasing problem. Accordingly, the British and their American allies evolved a carefully segregated intelligence system that limited the flow of Ultra to a select number of senior officers. The Ultra information dissemination process lay outside normal intelligence channels. For example, the intelligence officers of the Eighth Air Force would not be aware of the existence of Ultra and would therefore not know the duties of the Ultra liaison officers. Those officers, in turn, would forward Ultra intelligence only to the commanders of the Eighth and Ninth Air Forces. The system seems to have worked, for the Germans never caught on to how extensively their ciphers had been compromised.  Unfortunately, there were drawbacks. Intelligence is used only if it reaches those who understand its significance. Three specific incidents underline this point with great clarity. The first occurred in early September 1944, as Allied armies pursued the beaten Wehrmacht to the Third Reich's frontiers. On September 5, Bletchley Park made the following decryption available to Allied commanders in Western Europe: For rest and refit of panzer formations, Heeresgruppe Baker [Army Group B] ordered afternoon fourth [September 4] to remain in operation with battleworthy elements: two panzer, one-six panzer [Second, Sixteenth Panzer Divisions], nine SS and one nought [Ninth, Tenth] SS panzer divisions, elements not operating to be transferred by AOK [controlling army] five for rest and refit in area Venloo-Arnhem-Hertogenbosch. This intelligence, along with a second confirmation on September 6, indicated that at the very time when the British-planned Operation Market-Garden was moving forward, some of Germany's best panzer divisions would be refitting in the town selected as the goal of the British First Airborne Division and the operation's final objective on the Rhine—Arnhem. Putting this message together with intelligence that soon emerged from the Dutch underground in Holland that SS panzer units were refitting in the neighborhood of Arnhem, Allied commanders should have recognized that Operation Market-Garden had little prospect of success. Unfortunately, they did not put these pieces together, and officers at the highest level at Field Marshal Sir Bernard L. Montgomery's headquarters who had access to Ultra also failed to draw the correct conclusions.  A second example comes from a period three months after Operation Market-Garden, in December 1944. An unfortunate result of the rush to publish after the existence of Ultra became known to the public in the early 1970s has been the appearance of a number of legends. One of the most persistent is the belief that Ultra gave no advance warning to Allied commanders in December 1944 that the Germans were about to launch a major thrust through the Ardennes. Admittedly, Hitler's intuition suggested to him that German security had been compromised and led him to undertake a series of unprecedented measures to veil the Ardennes attack. Still, there were overt indications even in the high-level codes about German operational intentions. Ultra, however, pointed to a number of other indicators. These suggested that the Wehrmacht was moving supplies of ammunition and fuel into the region behind the Ardennes. Since the Germans were desperately low on such materiel, the allocations of resources could only portend major operations to come in the Ardennes. The German high command had no reason to expect that the Allies were planning to launch a major offensive in this area, especially since they were so obviously trying to kick in the door to the Reich at so many other points. Unfortunately, the mood in the higher Allied headquarters and in intelligence circles was euphoric—the war was almost over, and the Germans could not possibly launch an offensive. The third case of Ultra information not being used occurred during the Battle of the Atlantic. By 1943 the Allies were using Ultra, when available, in moving their convoys across the North Atlantic, so that the great formations of merchant shipping could avoid submarine patrol lines. In one particular case, decodings had picked up a heavy concentration of German submarines north of the Azores. Thus, a major convoy of aviation fuel tankers from the refineries at Trinidad to the Mediterranean was rerouted to the south of the Azores. Unfortunately, because his escorts needed refueling and the weather was better north of those islands, the convoy commander disregarded his instructions, sailed north of the Azores, and ran smack into the U-boats. Only two tankers reached port. What made the episode even more surprising was the fact that the convoy commander had just served a tour of duty in the Admiralty's convoy and routing section, where he surely must have had some awareness of the reasons for rerouting convoys.  If some commanders occasionally misused Ultra intelligence, such instances were the exception rather than the rule. It is, however, difficult to assess Ultra's full impact on the conflict. At times, particularly early in the war, no matter how much Ultra informed the British of German intentions, the Wehrmacht's overwhelming superiority made successful use of the information virtually impossible. For example, decoded Enigma messages in the spring of 1941 warned the British about German intentions against the Balkan states, first Greece and then—after the anti-German coup in Yugoslavia—against that country as well. Such intelligence, of course, was of extremely limited value due to the overwhelming forces that Hitler deployed in the region. On the other hand, the intercepts and decrypts in the summers of 1941 and 1942 gave the British government, and Churchill in particular, an accurate picture of Erwin Rommel's tank strength. That information indicated that the British army had considerable superiority in numbers in the North African theater against the Afrika Korps. These quantitative returns could not indicate, however, such factors as the technological superiority of German tanks and particularly the qualitative edge in doctrine and training that the Germans enjoyed. The intercepts, however, explain why Churchill kept consistent pressure on British Eighth Army commanders to attack the Afrika Korps.
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There's a good book entitled Codebreakers about the Bletchley operation. They enlisted some of Britain's most brilliant mathematicians. They were an odd but very effective bunch. They had a small army of women in uniform to run the huge mechanical calculators used to run the various combinations the codebreakers need.
I would love to read a narrative of the US and British codebreaking operations against the Soviet Union. Betcha there are some really interesting stories there. Probably won't be declassified in my lifetime!
Good! Here's hoping the other two drop.
Hey!
Hi!
Sneaking in at 33 is: D-sheare.
;-)
Yeah, check out two post troll named 'nucular'.
It seems he hasn't paid attention in the past three years.
Thanks, me too!
Like this maybe
Link to a New Zealand R/C club with pics of an A-10 and an F-4
http://www.aardvark.co.nz/tokmac/200411.shtml
Regards
alfa6
:-) Made my day!!
I agree with you that there's way more than meets the eye here. Rove signed his waiver for a reason - he does everything for a reason. Miller's going to jail indicates Rove isn't her source - so who's she protecting? Probably not a Republican. So, I think this stink bomb will eventually blow up in the MSM's faces, probably when Fitzgerald issues his report.
Yeah, it looks as if maybe Wilson was her source.
Or maybe John Kerry since he has mentioned CIA employees by name, at least once during the Presidential Debates IIRC.
And Kerry kept harping about Nigeria.
But this is a bit of a stretch, admittedly.
I can't wait for the full story onit.
I just smacked 'nucular' again.
He is obviously a troll.
I doubt he will come back with any intelligent answers.
LOL! You have way too much fun playing with trolls!
The Manhattan Project did big Monte Carlo like calculations of neutron scatter using Hollerith machines rigged, programmed, and operated as computers. This early computing used punched cards for input, output, and memory, since punched cards are what a Hollerith machine is and does. I remember what a pain computing using punched cards was in the old days, though now I treasure the link to the past.
I am absolutely inept at solving the rubics cube.
I've seen some VERY interesting TV documentaries about WWII codes and codebreaking on the History Channel. Good stuff!! Breaking Japanese codes allowed us to shoot down the plane carrying the top Japanese 4-star Admiral (can't remember his name immediately), resulting in his death.
050712-N-4374S-005 Pacific Ocean (July 12, 2005) - The Ecuadorian Navy corvette BAE Manabi (CM 12) underway in front of a formation during UNITAS 46-05 Pacific Phase. The Colombian Navy in this year’s UNITAS Pacific Phase hosts Ecuador, Panama, Peru and the United States. During the two-week exercise, participating units have the opportunity to train as unified force in all aspects of naval operations, from maritime interdiction to anti-submarine and electronic warfare. U.S. Naval Forces Southern Command sponsors UNITAS exercises with the objective to foster cooperation and develop interoperability among the navies of the region. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer’s Mate 2nd Class Michael Sandberg (RELEASED)
050712-N-5345W-014 Atlantic Ocean (July 12, 2005) - Aircraft handlers signal to the aircrew of an EA-6B Prowler, assigned to the "Zappers" of Electronic Warfare Squadron One Three Zero (VAQ-130), shortly after a successful arrested recovery aboard the Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75). Truman is currently conducting carrier qualifications in the Atlantic Ocean. U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Kristopher Wilson (RELEASED)
030803-N-0000X-003 Groton, Conn. (Aug. 3, 2003) - The U.S. Navy’s newest and most advanced nuclear-powered attack submarine and the lead ship of its class, PCU Virginia (SSN 774) is moved outdoors for the first time at the General Dynamics Electric Boat shipyard. Virginia is the Navy’s only major combatant ready to join the fleet that was designed with the post-Cold War security environment in mind and embodies the war fighting and operational capabilities required to dominate the littorals while maintaining undersea dominance in the open ocean. Virginia and the rest of the ships of its class are designed specifically to incorporate emergent technologies that will provide new capabilities to meet new threats. U.S. Navy photo by General Dynamics Electric Boat (RELEASED)
050713-N-0000X-001 Navy File Photo: Navy Special Warfare Trident insignia worn by qualified U.S. Navy SEALs. Navy SEALs are named after the environment in which they operate, the Sea, Air, and Land, and are the foundation of Naval Special Warfare combat forces. They are organized, trained and equipped to conduct a variety of Special Operations missions in all operational environments. Today’s SEALs trace their history from the elite frogmen of World War II. Training is extremely demanding, both mentally and physically, and produces the world’s best maritime warriors. U.S. Navy photo (RELEASED)
I'm one of those that can do the Rubik's cube. I learned it as a kid when I had the time and patience. If I had to learn it now, there would be no way.
Yamamoto. :-)
Wow. Great pictures, thanks.
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